Getting the direction right

I've made a discovery about myself these last few week: I really struggle to understand and then follow written instructions. When the Royal Persian Blossom pattern and instructions arrived, I sat down and read through them. I found them clear and easy to understand. However, once I began stitching, my mind was unable to apply the instructions to the embroidery. I find that it's much easier for me to understand how something has been worked if I can look at it closely.In the Introduction to the newly published book 20th Century Embroidery Techniques  by Gail Marsh, she writes,"I must confess I never rely on descriptions in needlework books, other than for a quick reference and I prefer to work out how the stitch is constructed for myself." Well, yes, I can completely understand that way of thinking. Maybe I'm a visual learner or maybe I'm an engineer at heart and like to solve puzzles, but either way reading and understanding embroidery instructions is not one of my strengths.When I began the next section of the Royal Persian Blossom project, I knew that I would be doing long and short shading at an angle on the outside of the "Spray Seeded Leaf".  So naturally, I began by outlining the shape with split stitch. I used two different shades of thread to match the shading that would come later.The instructions show that the direction of the long and short shading should be quite vertical in relation to the shape. I did my best to stitch in this direction, but the stitches worked their way around so they became more horizontal than they should have been.The first two shades of gold weren't too bad and it seemed like everything was going to be fine until I stitched the darkest and last row and everything suddenly looked pretty terrible.The stitches of the darkest shade were too short, didn't go deeply enough to the middle color and were too horizontal. The whole thing didn't look shaded at all but choppy and messy. The entire curved shape is only 1/4 inch or 1/2 cm wide. Into that long narrow shape I needed to blend three different shades of gold.The place that I needed to really change the stitch direction was right at the curve just before the flip at the end. It isn't much of a change but it made a big difference.The next step was to do shaded chain stitch on the other side of the Spray Seeded Leaf. The technique is the same as on the stem - alternating the dark to light colors on alternate sides of the shape. From the bottom to the top of the curve under the leaf, the colors are 149, 147, 145, 144, 146, 148.Here's the whole thing (almost) as far as I've gotten. It doesn't look like much when looking at the whole piece, does it? Working on this piece is a lot like reading a very long and really good book - it's so interesting you don't want it to end and you're glad there are lots of pages!I love big, long projects like this. What about you? Is your preference for long, complex projects or short ones? Or a mix of the two?